


Prisoner of the Heart

by Darkstarling



Category: Cultist Simulator (Video Game)
Genre: But they're hard to keep there, Emotional Manipulation, F/M, Heart cultists are scarier than you think, Seduction to the Dark Side, They can send Cultists to prison
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-25
Updated: 2020-10-25
Packaged: 2021-03-08 22:40:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,088
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27183949
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Darkstarling/pseuds/Darkstarling
Summary: This History didn't happen. Did any of them?Imprisoned occultists often take special precautions. Rooms with no angles. Amphetamines. Signs reminding you why you're there.Madeline doesn't need anything like that. It's just that if Connie Lee had her way she would never speak to the same person twice for the rest of her life.Douglas knows she's an unrepentant murderer, caught red handed with no possibility of mistake. She needs to be locked away.It would just be easier if she wasn't so nice...
Comments: 4
Kudos: 10





	Prisoner of the Heart

“When was the last time you sang to yourself?” Madeline asked me through the bars. I sighed, continuing to carefully check over her cell.

It was a refreshingly ordinary cell, for the Suppression Bureau. Comfortable enough, though I wouldn’t want to stay. The Director says we have to be better than our enemies, and it’s hard to argue with that. There was even a Bible, for all the good it would do this lot.

And this cell in particular was ordinary as could be. None of the stringent precautions of a constant suicide watch. No amphetamines. No alarms every quarter hour to remind you that the cell was still occupied. No rope ladder into a doorless round pit that had been carefully constructed without angles.

Just this cell and a pretty young woman. One who, if the Director had her way, would never speak to the same person twice again in her life. 

“Oh come on,” she said with a smile. “You’re allowed to talk to me, I know you are. Arthur told me so. I imagine you can guess when it was for me.”

“Probably spent the morning singing to the bluebirds outside the window,” I muttered to myself as I sat down. Unfortunately she heard me.

“Ha! No, but close. I found a nice echo in the corner around lunch.” She clamored awkwardly up onto the bed, took one of the window bars in her hand for support, and leaned out into the room with a look of intense concentration on her face.

“What are you…”

“Shush! Here we are,” she added, as she apparently got herself positioned to her satisfaction. She hummed a scale, up and down, and looked at me expectantly. 

She was right. The acoustics were lovely. It reminded me of my grandmother’s piano somehow, the simple notes far more fulfilling than they had any right to be. She smiled at my own smile, then damn me if she didn’t start humming chopsticks. I actually laughed before I caught myself, then blushed and sat up straight.

Her smile turned a bit sad.

“Sorry,” she said, and she sounded like she meant it. “I know it’s hard for you.”

“What is?” I replied sullenly.

“This. Keeping people prisoner. Even when it’s necessary it never sits well with anyone who has a good Heart.”  
I could hear the capital letter when she said it, and it made me angry. “I’m not going to let you out,” I snapped.

“I know,” she replied. She didn’t seem much bothered by that.

“They caught you at dawn drowning a man in the Thames. And we still can’t find the ghost you made of him.”

“I’m not arguing.”

“You know Natalia had nightmares for a week after? She kept saying ‘What happened to his mouth? What happened to his mouth?’ Why would you do that, eh? What’s even the point? Afraid he’d spill your secrets?”

“I didn’t do that to him. He died. That’s just how the world works. Look, I don’t want to fight okay? If we’ve only got this once to meet each other then we shouldn’t spend it angry. You’ve just got a few hours and then you’ll never have to think of me again.”

She lay back on her bed, and seemed to consider the matter closed. She sat in silence, eyes closed, pulling out paper and a pencil from beneath her pillow and beginning to sketch. I’d been shocked when I found out our prisoners were permitted such things, but apparently real sorcery takes less tangible tools than simple ink and arcane signs. 

For my part I stayed quiet.

It’s hard to stay quiet around another human being. Especially one who keeps looking at you intently from behind her sketching before turning back to it. Was she drawing me?

When had I last sung to myself?

“I don’t remember,” I answered out loud.

“Well that’s just sad,” she said, as if that had been the most natural segue in the world. And not, for example, breaking the silence with all the grace of a dog’s fart.

“What? I’m not a singing type.”

“Now I know you’re lying. And there’s nothing sadder than a singing man who doesn’t sing. What about to someone else then? There has to be something.”

I frowned. I did like to sing but, well, these days there just wasn’t much to sing about. Especially, I reminded myself forcibly, when a quiet day involved guard duty for bloody necromancers. Still, it was a harmless question. I thought back.

“Must have been… Nat’s birthday party actually. Few months ago. They got enough rum in me to sing Gilbert and Sullivan. I am the very model of a modern major general…”

She laughed, clear and delighted. “Oh, there we are!” She cocked her head conspiratorially. “You care a lot about Nat don’t you?”

“Course I do. She’s a good woman. Stands up for her principles, won’t let man or beast stop her from speaking the truth. And she knows her way around a lab like no one you’ve ever seen. Woman’s an artist with a chemistry set. Why?”  
“Oh nothing,” she said, in a tone that made it clear that it was definitely something. “It’s just strange to think of the infamous Dr. Natalia Dragon having friends, that’s all. Let alone ones who care about her as much as you clearly do.”

I shook my head. “Why did you want to know anyway? Why do you care?”

“Well isn’t that a bit personal?” She didn’t look offended though. “Why do I care? Everyone is unique. We all have a unique beat in the music of the world. I like to hear what little of it I can.”

I grunted in disgust. 

“What, and I suppose strangling lunatics in the fens made the music better?”

“Yes,” she replied, completely unapologetic. I shivered. “And you? Why do you care, if we’re asking personal questions?”

“What do you mean why? I can’t let anyone be hurt by people like you.” I was getting heated again, but this time she just cocked her head.

“Liar."

“What do you mean ‘liar’? Do you know how many bodies I’ve recovered in my day? How many remains from ceremonies that we can’t even identify? And you’re telling me I don’t care?” I was shouting.

She was calm.

“Of course you care,” she said, in a tone that implied I was a fool. “But you don’t care about people being hurt. And I know that,” she interrupted, cutting off my response, “because you don’t know Conner’s name.”

“Who?”

“The lunatic. The one I strangled and drowned in the bog.”

I stopped dead, and my head spun. No, no I didn’t. I had never learned his name. I hadn’t cared to.

“His name was Conner O’Shea,” she continued. “He was an Irish immigrant from Belfast, and he knew when to cut his hair. He would drink with Sylvia, and he drew the most striking caricatures. He’d leave them about for us to find.  
He had a bit of talent in the invisible arts. Nothing spectacular, but we tried to help him. He insisted he would study either way, and we thought this way he might at least survive. But our help wasn’t enough. By the end he wouldn’t eat, and couldn’t sleep. If we didn’t restrain him he would try to sew his own mouth shut. He followed the roads of the dead too closely you see, and returned when he should have gone on. Freeing him from his body was the only thing we could do.”

She sighed, and looked at me sorrowfully. “I don’t regret that. But I wish that it had never come to it at all. It was a mistake, and we should have known better. We’re all stumbling blind here you know, even adepts. If there’s one thing I could change, it would have been finding the words to stop him.”

I was still staring, shaking my head at that revelation. I had read her case file, and the highlights of her trial. She was described as an unrepentant murderess. It had never occurred to me to consider why a murderer might not repent.

“What about you?” She asked, voice quiet. “Whatever reason you really care, there must be something you regret. Something you would change.”

I nodded, without thinking. “Hyde Park. The Rhododendron Murders, you must have heard of them. I wish I’d spotted that last mirror. You’d think something can’t survive meeting your eyes would have a hard time killing but…” It hadn’t been her lot. It was more than six years ago now, but I could still see it so clearly. Six school children, backs slashed to shreds as they ran. A seventh crying, back against the wall but something still edging a bloody glass blade from behind him. The angle of his head as he desperately bent away, the glass pressing against his neck.

“Douglas, I’m so sorry.” Her voice jolted me out of the memories. She was standing by the cell door, on the verge of tears. “I didn’t mean to hurt you.”

“It’s alright,” I said gruffly. “You know, you were right about me not caring because people were hurt. And I used to. I think that was when I stopped. I remember writing the report, and not being able to stand writing the names of the children. But you’re also right that I still care. Someone has to do it. And if no one else will, I suppose it has to be me.”

“It’s alright,” she replied. “That’s enough.”

I shouldn’t have cared. She was a murderess, a necromancer, she’d helped drive a man mad and then killed him and raised him as a voiceless ghost. But I still closed my eyes, and felt a tear run down my face.

There were no more great revelations that day. We passed the time with simpler questions. I learned that if she could have dinner with anyone it would be Charlie Chaplin. I admitted I always rehearsed my telephone calls before I made them. Neither of us would ever want to be famous, for anything. And before long it was time for the change of shift.

“It really was nice meeting you, Douglas,” she said as I stood. “Despite…” and she gestured eloquently to indicate the entire situation. “I’m very sorry I won’t see you again.”

“I think you might actually,” I replied. “Much though the Director wishes otherwise, we don’t have enough budget for that. Cycling the guards through the week was the best she could argue out of the penny pinchers, and that was pushing it.”

“Really? That’s the best news I’ve heard since I came here!” She positively leaped to the door. “Oh do tell Randall I’ve missed him as well. And Arthur, and…”

“I’ll tell all of them,” I replied with a laugh. “You remember all their names?”

“Of course!” She looked at me, a little hurt. “You didn’t think I was going to just forget you did you?”

“What? No, I…” I stopped at her expression, which had grown teasing.

“Goodnight, Douglas. And say hello to Natalia as well for me. I’d love to have a chance to compliment her work.”

“You do know she’s the one who tracked you down in the end, right? Even if the Director was the one holding the gun, she did the real work.”

“Oh I know. But good work should be praised, even if I wish she hadn’t been quite so meticulous. Now go on, your replacement awaits.”

I shook my head and headed down the corridor. And, to my surprise, I found myself humming.

As Douglas walked left there was a chill breeze. It might have been from the open door. A piece of paper glided from the small desk in the corner, and as Madeline watched with interest it began to wither and age. Soon the yellowing paper traced the faint image of a comically exaggerated Douglas, shot dead and bleeding on the cobblestones.

“Oh don’t be like that, Conner,” Madeline said. The sound of heavy books was coming down the corridor. She quickly scooped up the paper and crushed it, the withered paper crumbling to dust. “There’s no need to be mean. You’ll see. Before you know it, we’ll all be the very best of friends.”

For the briefest moment Madeline’s breath fogged, and the room was full of the chill autumn scent of agreement and possibility. A fitful breeze rattled the cell door, and Madeline smiled.

**Author's Note:**

> There was an article a few years ago about how people could fall in love with thirty-seven questions and staring into each other's eyes. If that isn't occult lore I don't know what is.


End file.
